The Clean Trillion: Building a Smarter Energy Future

The consortium of major institutional investors known as CERES is promoting the idea of an economic surge related to the “Clean Trillion”—a projected annual capital investment threshold required to prevent a 2ºC rise in global average temperatures. CERES projects the world will need to invest an average of $1 trillion per year in clean power generation every year for the next 36 years to effectively put the brakes on global average temperature rise.

The core message is that this is not “added cost”; this is fresh investment and a major opportunity for a new wave of prosperity across the world, which institutional investors whose net worth is more than $75 trillion, can and should support.

This is the true economic context in which all policy discussions around climate and energy are taking place. We need to find the right way to get this message to everyone we speak to. Though public opinion is shifting toward climate action (83% of Americans now favor action), climate science is not always the right way to get people on board, because for some people, it just doesn’t feel like a moral incentive. But the solvency of our Republic is, in many of those cases, and we can show the economic trend lines and make it clear that failure to break the status quo and innovate will cost us dearly, in economic terms, while innovating and leading the global clean energy transition will never hurt us; it will only ensure our economic leadership and prosperity in this century and beyond.